Walking the extra mile to upgrade Andrea’s distribution

Mexico’s leading shoe catalogue brand Andrea dramatically reduced delivery times and improved its internal processes by boosting their level of precision and quality of their shipments, enabled by a retrofit logistics solution.

Andrea, the leading brand in the shoe catalogue market in Mexico sought to streamline the operation of its warehouse and improve delivery times for purchases made on its website, as well as those shipments destined to different cities all over Mexico. To face this challenge, it turned to Interroll and Conveyroll, which worked on the design of a logistics solution that would allow Andrea not only to make shipments more efficiently, but also to double check each shipment to ensure that both the product and the address to which it would be sent were correct. “After reviewing the client’s requirements, we set ourselves the task of designing the solution that would adapt to the installed capacities of the client,” said Alfonso López, project manager at Conveyroll.

“Andrea wanted to improve its delivery times while increasing the precision of its shipments. This was something that was taking too much time and too much effort, considering how important it is for the company to deliver as fast as it can and with minimal errors.” The design and implementation of the project took about 18 months from its conception until its full operation. “We worked with the Conveyroll team to design a solution that would allow Andrea to impact its business indicators and significantly improve their delivery times,” commented Stephen Cwiak, responsible for the project at Interroll. The final system configuration and scope of the project for Andrea includes three semi-auto induction conveyors to load items onto the crossbelt sorter. The sorter loop with a total throughput of 6.000 units per hour acts as the ‘heart’ of the system transferring the goods via the crossbelt sorter carrier to one of 100 chutes dispersed around the loop.

The machine level controls provide a smoothly controlled system that uses a scan tunnel to identify the goods via a bar code on each item. The bar code information is used to communicate with the Warehouse Management System in order to deliver the goods to the proper destination.

Thanks to the installed technology, Andrea’s material flow operations are now three times more efficient and delivery times of previously between four and seven days were reduced to two to three days for delivery. Also, the order errors reached a minimum thanks to the duplicated review configuration programmed in the system, thus guaranteeing that each package arrives at its correct destination.

“During the analysis and planning session, we reviewed the minimum and maximum sizes, as well as the weight range in order to design a solution that could meet all the requests,” added López.

The material flow solution has 200 outputs that allow Andrea to generate delivery cycles to all of Mexico’s cities, either through their own stores or directly to the final customer. The design of the solution was made in such a way that it easily allows modification or upgrades, making it possible to double its capacity in the short term.

“This has been a very interesting project, given the characteristics of Andrea’s systems, its operation and the needs presented,” added Cwiak. “It has been very rewarding to work with the Conveyroll team to offer this solution.”